14 ms·

The birth and death of a bike company: What happened to SpeedX

132 points by martin_ 7y ago

RugnirViking 7y ago
Is it just me, or are there seemingly far more people trying to invest and profit off bikeshares than there are using them? I've lived in several cities in europe and i'm not actually sure i've ever seen anybody using them. Yet there seems to be tons of competing companies putting out bikes in the street. On top of that, they don't even seem to bother marketing or anything. The first I'll hear of a new company is seeing a new colour of bike. The idea is sound in practise, but people seem to place great value owning their own transportation and the flexibility it affords them.
- jxcl 7y ago
  Edit: I'm an idiot. Ignore the below. This article is about a company that was building bicycles to sell directly to consumers, not a bikeshare company.
  - martin_ 7y ago
    Most of the article is about why the consumer business failed because the sister company tried to do bikesharing
  - baxtr 7y ago
    You are not an idiot :)
- ChuckMcM 7y ago
  It isn't just you. In a capital rich environment (where getting money for new ventures is easier than normal) a single success (even if it is just perception) and a low barrier to entry, can lead to many copycat companies appearing. And yes, they over saturate the market, and no you can't easily tell which will win and which will lose from the outside. For the "serial entrepreneurs" this is an easy way to stay employed (it can be surprisingly hard to get a job at BigCorp with CEO on your resume). These folks might just start a new company, raise some money, and voila they are once again on an "incredible journey." In my experience for each "successful" exit (where the investors made some money) you get a ticket for one free "future" company from those investors. Once you don't have enough tickets to get another company funded you either have to change venues (new people, less history), or change markets (also new people but can be in the same locale).
  - DanFeldman 7y ago
    > it can be surprisingly hard to get a job at BigCorp with CEO on your resume Why do you think that is? It's so common to hear advice that bigco's will always want to hire people w/ Startup experience, but does that not extend to the founders?
    - ChuckMcM 7y ago
      I can only speak for places where I've worked and hired folks, but the consensus seemed to be that people who seek out the CEO role are highly correlated with a need to control everything and less well correlated with "team players" (or people who can work with peers in a give and take sort of situation). In acquisition scenarios such companies are sometimes much more keen on keeping the VP of Engineering ("get things done") person than the CEO ("I'm the boss") person. That and the cited "common knowledge[1]" that the population of CEOs contains a higher percentage of sociopaths than the general population. I have yet to work at a company that considered sociopathic characteristics as a "positive" for the company. [1] I really have heard this from multiple sources but have yet to find any well executed study that shows it to be actually true so I treat such pronouncements with a bit of skepticism. I have heard more than a few people who are disgruntled at losing their job will blame it on their boss being a sociopath. Such externalization of causes feels good psychologically but it is also self serving.
      - arkades 7y ago
        There is such a series of studies - but they were all done by the same PI, who has built his career on redefining "sociopathy" over-broadly, more or less to enable him to have headlines like "20% of CEOs are sociopaths!" edit: I don't know why this is being downvoted. Is it because I'm lampooning a "common knowledge" that people like? For pete's sake, the research paper that spawned this meme even got retracted by the authors: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/23744006.2016.1232537?journalCode=rcrm20 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/23744006.2016.12...
      - bsder 7y ago
        > In acquisition scenarios such companies are sometimes much more keen on keeping the VP of Engineering ("get things done") person than the CEO ("I'm the boss") person. I think it's less "The Boss" than the fact that the CEO is generally more marketing/finance focused (far less relevant after a buyout as the purchasing company already has that established) than the CTO or VP of Engineering. There are, of course, exceptions where a company gets bought specifically to install their CEO in the CEO role of the purchasing company.
- camjohnson26 7y ago
  The main problem with bike shares is the ridiculously short time limit. If you could check one out for a few hours they’d be more useful, instead most are time limited to about 30 minutes. My sister used one once to bike by a lake front and she said she was stressed the whole time about not making it to the next station to reset the time limit before it expired.
  - nradov 7y ago
    They only charge an extra dollar or two to keep the bike longer. For most people it's not worth getting stressed about. I've used bikes shares in a several cities for 3+ hours and it was never a problem (although riding one of those crappy bikes for a few hours is kind of torture).
    - Scoundreller 7y ago
      What, you don’t like pedalling a tank on 2 non-pneumatic wheels when you have to get somewhere?
  - Someone 7y ago
    The main Dutch bike share system doesn’t have silly time limits. It has a fixed price of €3,85 (about $4,35) for a day. That allows you, for example, to cycle from a train station to a business meeting, park the bike there for a few hours, and cycle back to the station in the afternoon. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OV-fiets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OV-fiets. It also features halfway decent (for the task at hand) bicycles. Both are good for consumers, but I don’t think such a system makes venture capitalists happy.
  - 121789 7y ago
    was that in Chicago? I felt the same stress
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  In Paris, the private bikeshares seem to have been entirely replaced with scooters and a smaller number of e-bikes. The publicly sanctioned bikeshare is in shambles after an operator change. The only thing keeping the public system alive is it’s offerings outside the city’s core.
  - orbifold 7y ago
    The Parisian one is the only one I’ve used and it was much better 5 years ago compared to 2 years ago.
- Knufen 7y ago
  I live in Denmark and I see 10-15 people ok bikeshare bikes each time I commute. They either use the government ones or rent from private companies.
- zn44 7y ago
  In London it's hard to find a free bike around the rush hour. They are all gone in case of tube strike or other public transport distraction
- simlevesque 7y ago
  I live in Montreal, where it all started, and they are everywhere.
- cafard 7y ago
  I don't know. I see a lot of people on "Citi Bikes", but Washington is a big tourist destination.
- luqa 7y ago
  In my city (Milan, Italy) bike-sharing is an extremely common solution. I feel like the business model is the main problem. Low margins high-costs (you frequently need to replace thousands of bikes) and basically no moat. Every few years a new startup can enter the marketing with a better bike. The incumbents have to improve their or risk losing the entire market in a matter of weeks.
  - Barrin92 7y ago
    >Low margins high-costs (you frequently need to replace thousands of bikes) and basically no moat. the story of the sharing economy right there. I seriously don't know how bike / taxi / scooter rental companies have become a favourite of tech investors. It seems like some Robin Hood scheme to distribute money from investors to customers
  - bonestamp2 7y ago
    Can you help us understand why bike-sharing is popular in Milan? For example, why wouldn't someone just buy a bike?
    - icebraining 7y ago
      Seems like a subscription to their BikeMi system costs 36€/year for unlimited free rides (up to 30mins/ride), so quite cost competitive with bike ownership. This is becoming common in main European cities (I know of Brussels, Paris and Lisbon).
    - crummy 7y ago
      It's genuinely less hassle. Where do I park my bike? How do I prevent it from being stolen? It got a flat tire, what do I do? These seem like simple questions but bike sharing provides such a simple solution to them, plus more: you caught a ride to the park but don't want to pay for a taxi back? Missed the bus? Need to get to a meeting a few blocks away but don't want to arrive sweaty from a run? The answer is there's a share bike already within sight of you that you can rent for (literally) pennies in seconds. (They're also pretty heavy for anything but short distances and not always in great condition. And at least in Berlin where I lived you can get your own bike for $50 or so, which I had. But I still like the idea.)
- rdiddly 7y ago
  I've pondered that question too. Something like Uber or Lyft works partly because of the cost and burden of car ownership. It's attractive to use someone else's equipment if you don't have to buy, maintain, finance, fuel, insure, and store (park) similar equipment yourself, to the tune of thousands of dollars per year. But then you look at bike ownership. I almost want to put "bike ownership" in quotes because even the mere phrase makes it sound so much more serious and demanding than it is. It's so easy and cheap, it seems obvious you would just do that. Or put it this way, I don't find myself going "I just don't want & can't handle all that responsibility of a bike!" It's like, boy you better not get any houseplants then, that much responsibility will stress you right out!
  - analog31 7y ago
    Interestingly, a thing about Uber/Lyft is that the number of cars is limited because they are based on converting existing private cars to hired use. So Uber/Lyft don't eliminate private cars. The number of bike shares that can be pumped into a city is limited only by the capital that can be pumped in.
    - alvah 7y ago
      Are you sure nobody specifically buys or leases a car to do Uber / Lyft gigs?
      - analog31 7y ago
        I'd be shocked if the economics made sense, but not all investments produce a return.
        TeMPOraL 7y ago
        Uber had (probably still has) it structured so that if the investment fails, it's the driver that suffers, not the company.
    - ac29 7y ago
      Judging by a billboard that I pass reasonably frequently, Uber is more than happy to "help" potential drivers without cars get them and start driving for Uber [0]. In theory, the number of cars available to Uber is also only limited by the capital that can be pumped in. I don't know if the prices are currently subsidized, but there's no reason they couldn't be. [0] I'm assuming it's this program: https://www.uber.com/us/en/drive/vehicle-solutions/ https://www.uber.com/us/en/drive/vehicle-solutions/
- fooblitzky 7y ago
  Seattle collects data on bike share usage, available here: https://www.seattle.gov/transportation/projects-and-programs/programs/bike-program/bike-share https://www.seattle.gov/transportation/projects-and-programs... Seems in the sunnier months they get about 200,000 trips, from a fleet of 10,000 bikes. I think a lot of people start riding the share bikes before deciding to purchase a bike themselves too. Overall ridership is up 12% this year.
  - breuleux 7y ago
    In Montreal, the figure ranges from 600,000 (May) to 900,000 trips (July) from a fleet of 7,500 (there are no bikes from mid-November to mid-April). They're everywhere. Edit: I was still on the 2017 figures for some reason. 800,000 trips last May, 975,000 last August. (https://montreal.bixi.com/en/open-data https://montreal.bixi.com/en/open-data)
    - Belphemur 7y ago
      Even with those ridership number the company went bankrupt in 2014 and had to be bought by the city that made it non profit. In other words, not really a profitable market.
      - alexanderdmitri 7y ago
        Companies targeting great markets fail all the time due to other factors. It not like all that needs to happen is someone point their finger at a good market and magically money starts piling up.
  - mdorazio 7y ago
    Great link, thanks for sharing. A couple more stats for other readers here: - In May 2019, bike share users took about 218,400 trips on a fleet of about 4,400-5,100 bikes. (~43 trips per bike average during the month) - Around 95,000 individual users - ~2 trips per individual user during the month So, realistically not that great on a per-user basis and it seems like a lot of users are only trying it out a few times or grabbing a bike once in a while. That meshes pretty well with the idea that people who find themselves using the service frequently probably just buy a bike.
- twic 7y ago
  > i'm not actually sure i've ever seen anybody using them As a datapoint, i almost crashed into someone riding one in London an hour and a half ago. The front lights on the Lime bikes are evidently not very reliable.
  - kohtatsu 7y ago
    Oh no. My girlfriend and I recently rented some Lime bikes in Calgary. The brakes on hers weren't reliable enough to go down hills, let alone stop in an emergency. Mine weren't much better. We left appropriate reviews, and were able to tell the next rider which to use, but they really need a quick maintenance survey, even just for brake shape, and perhaps a "flag bike as dangerous" button. Also found the e-assist awkward, particularly at low speeds around pedestrians. Would ride again, but just double check the brakes/mainteance.
- Johnny555 7y ago
  I make regular use of bike share -- I have 2 bus options to take me home, one drops me off 2 blocks from home, one drops me off 2 miles from home. When I take the farther bus, I usually use a bike-share bike for those last 2 miles (the route is on a dedicated bike path). Works great for me and apparently someone uses the bike in for their commute in the mornings since the bike is usually gone in the morning when I get to the bus stop.
- sethhochberg 7y ago
  There's a definite network effect... its hard to justify riding a shared bike somewhere if you can't be reasonably sure there will be one for you to ride back when its time to return. Maybe you could cobble a trip together with multiple vendors in cities where there are competing systems, but thats more hassle and makes it difficult if you're buying a yearly pass or some other monthly discount. If you want some real data from a large program with good public support, CitiBike in NYC publishes open ridership data: https://www.citibikenyc.com/system-data https://www.citibikenyc.com/system-data The tl;dr is that the system is very popular, and they're constantly expanding it - currently averaging around 62k trips per day on 12k bikes across 750 stations. I own my own bike, but I'll use a Citibike for a one-way trip or to bridge a gap when I'm already out away from home without my bike. There is also a ton of utility for people who ride more casually, or don't want to carry bikes up stairs, or don't have room in their apartment, etc, etc.
- megaremote 7y ago
  > I've lived in several cities in europe and i'm not actually sure i've ever seen anybody using them. Used them all the time in London and Paris, and visiting other cities. They were great. Loads of people used them in the cities I saw. I think there are a sort of people who will only use cars for everything, and don't really notice anything not car related.
- benj111 7y ago
  "they don't even seem to bother marketing or anything. The first I'll hear of a new company is seeing a new colour of bike" Is that not the best marketing? Actually paying for inner city marketing is probably expensive, online marketing is probably going to reach more people that this isnt relevant to. If you're seeing the bike you probably are the target market and can see its a somewhat legit company (in the sense that they do actually have bikes at least).
- mruts 7y ago
  I've seen tons of people riding the CitiBikes in NYC. They seem fairly popular.
- kgutteridge 7y ago
  I used the Boris Bikes in London 249 times last year, theres an annual pass that costs £90. I commute into the city by train so its a lot easier than using my own bike. In London at least the scheme seems fairly well used with around million hires a month in the summer months http://content.tfl.gov.uk/santander-cycles-quarterly-performance-q3-1819.pdf http://content.tfl.gov.uk/santander-cycles-quarterly-perform...
- wastedhours 7y ago
  I see the Santander Cycles used in London all of the time (not calling them by their slang name because #politics) - it flies in the face of the notion that you have to be dockless to succeed in bike sharing. Honestly, I hate the litter these dockless sharing companies have spread across the city.
- stevekemp 7y ago
  Like many of the other people to reply, I can only say that here in Helsinki the local council operates a scheme which is very very popular. It costs €30 for a "season", and that gives you 30-minutes free ride from the bicycles you'll find all over the place in their stands. You can pay a small fee to get more time, or you can do what most people do which is to ride to a stand, and swap your bike for another. The only problem with the scheme is that it only runs around the summer, but I guess fewer people are interested in cycling in the snow/ice-heavy part of the year. More details here: https://kaupunkipyorat.hsl.fi/en/helsinki/products https://kaupunkipyorat.hsl.fi/en/helsinki/products
Whinner 7y ago
Another reason to not support large ticket items on Kickstarter.
dajonker 7y ago
I always find it shocking to hear that so many people think crowdfunded projects have no risk, that it's somehow similar to ordering stuff from Amazon. Especially when people invest more money than they are actually willing to lose. Whose mistake is that? The customer for not understanding what they are into? Platforms like Kickstarter for not explaining it clearly enough?
nradov 7y ago
It's a shame that there's been little innovation from road bike manufacturers in the past 10 years or so. The last major innovation was aero carbon frames. Since then everyone is just copying each other and trying to improve by fractions of a percent for weight, stiffness, and efficiency. Most of the value and innovation has shifted to the groupset suppliers, with Shimano taking the lion's share of the market and a few smaller players picking up scraps. When all the important components come from Shimano it barely matters who manufactures the frame and assembles the complete bike. At this point road bikes are about as good as they will ever be within the limits of available materials and UCI rules. It would be nice if one of the big bike manufacturers would make their own high-quality components to compete with Shimano. Or throw out the UCI rules and build a fast, comfortable bike for customers who don't care about competing in sanctioned races.
- rasz 7y ago
  Why bother innovating when its not needed? Expensive bicycles are in the same market as fancy watches. Its all just wealth signalling. Nobody needs 10% lighter frames, or 5% more aerodynamic shapes. If you want to drive faster or burn less energy you go electric, If you want health benefits you buy the shittiest heaviest bike you can find and pedal harder.
  - CydeWeys 7y ago
    Don't get a shitty bike if you want exercise. Shitty bikes are unpleasant to ride, making the experience not fun, and discouraging you from doing more (and longer duration) riding. Also, safety is important, and shitty bikes are less safe.
    - bluntfang 7y ago
      This response to the person ahead of you makes me think you either don't know much about bikes or you missed their point. I think we all agree, buy something shitty and you get shit, especially with things you put between you and the earth. A medium quality bike, which costs an order of magnitude less than a "fancy" bike, will do literally everyone who isn't a cat 1-2 racer fine, objectively. Price difference is $1-5k for a mid range vs $10-20k for top of the line. I don't think anyone is advocating for $300 walmart bikes here.
aurora72 7y ago
There are no noteworthy novelties in this kickstarted bike. I'd personally venture to lose some money if I saw some real innovation and I wouldn't bother even if they failed to deliver the end product or the company went bankrupt. Here we see only some Chinese copy work.
Theodores 7y ago
A very well written article. I like the point about how the follies of the bike sharing business have actually got people to ride bikes. Before it was not an option to hire a bike for a day, nowadays that is a thing. It takes a while for things to find their level. The 'Boris bike' is now a feature of London, the other bikes haven't established that niche in the streetscape. The road bike was also innovative, if flawed. Plenty of bikes and plenty of bike groupsets are flawed when they first come out. It takes a couple of iterations to get right and the costs of getting it wrong are terrible. Years ago in the days of the mountain bike craze a brand came out with a few of their own components including a bespoke freehub body. This did not last long on any given bike and it did not take long before the warranty returns aspect of the business fixing whole wheels took over. There was no scope to develop the brand when all hands are literally swapping tyres and tubes onto new wheels and getting them out to customers. Sometimes bikes that don't actually work don't bounce back. During the mountain bike boom there was a shortage of Shimano components and a rising Yen. This made it hard to get the gears and brakes needed to build a bike. So European components might be substituted. And they would not actually work together, no matter how skilled the mechanic, no matter how new everything was, the gears would not shift and the brakes would not stop the bike. Very few of these frankenbikes made it back. They just sat in sheds and garages, never to be ridden! The SpeedX bike was not a bike that would be just dumped in the shed or bought as a well meaning gift. They could not rely on 90% of the problems not coming back. They also were never going to do well with the cycling press. Or the industry. The cycling business is actually really conservative and there are chunks of it controlled by people who never actually ride..
at-fates-hands 7y ago
I can't think of an industry that hasn't been affected by Chinese manufacturers trying to undercut American or European companies by short cutting the manufacturing process. I just see the same thing with this bike company. Ignore all the rideshare stuff, the push to grow so fast and not having a sustainable product and its the same story. They took a standard Aero fram and tried to make it appear as a "high end" product. The problem is, once you've ridden a high end road bike you suddenly realize the amount of engineering and R&D that goes into those bikes to get them to perform at that level. You can't just reproduce that overnight, it takes time and a lot of money. From the article (and the scathing reviews of the bike) it didn't sound like they really tried to make a quality product, just another carbon Aero knockoff with a cool integrated stem. At that point, it was easy to undercut your competition on price. The lessons are all too clear and which you see a lot of. You can't cut corners on products like this and sell it off as "high end" and expect to get away with it. Source: I worked in the bike industry for almost 15 years. Had various stints with Specialized and Cannondale.
adambyrtek 7y ago
I wonder how does Kickstarter deal with credit card chargebacks? Their support site basically says "talk to us directly please"[1], but it's common for chargebacks to be awarded to customers regardless of arguments provided by a merchant. Would they just consider it the cost of doing business or try to recover the money from the backed project? [1] https://www.kickstarter.com/disputes https://www.kickstarter.com/disputes
mbesto 7y ago
Oh man, I remember when SpeedX first came out. I can't describe it exactly, but it was an immediate red flag for me. Basically they tried to fix everything about buying a bike in one fell swoop and said it was going to cost less than other providers. If they were able to provide a superior experience to bike sizing, bike computer, wheels, frame, etc all in one fell swoop, then I would expect the overall product to be more expensive...not cheaper. Huge red flag.
- usrusr 7y ago
  > I can't describe it exactly, but it was an immediate red flag for me. The universal playbook of all bike related crowdfunding campaigns: take a tiny innovation (or none at all, it's not strictly necessary to have something original), put it in a blender with everything that has become state of the art within the last decade or two and use it to impress those who have never experienced anything better than a walmart clunker from the falling edge of the original mountain-bike wave.
ozten 7y ago
The article challenges Kickstarter to refund their 5% commission when companies go bankrupt. Seems like the right thing to do and could win back more customer loyalty.
- usrusr 7y ago
  It would be seen a nice symbolic act by some, but as an admission of guilt by many others. This would not end well.
rb808 7y ago
I wonder if the boss is still driving the lambo. (actually I shouldn't have to guess)
Balgair 7y ago
> Bluegogo’s contribution alone was 800,000 bikes, impounded in cities across China – wave after wave of blue bikes, piled two high, sitting in construction sites and empty lots on the outskirts of megacities, waiting. Decaying. > Zoom out from the specific, and you quickly start to drown in the enormity of it all. Millions of bikes, assembled by thousands of hands. Entire towns like Wangqingtuo, built around servicing a rapacious demand. Restaurants and hotels and supermarkets, constructed and opened and shuttered in what are now virtual ghost-towns. Countless families relying on the bikeshare industry to survive. Seats and spokes and tyres beyond number, consigned as fast as they were made to technicolour scrapheaps around China. All of it, this vast mound of human toil, left to rust and rot among bamboo and rubble. I am continually facinated with China and it's people. But in instances like this I get a real feeling of looking into the eyes of Yog-Sothoth, the Gate and the Key.
_dmurph 7y ago
I'm pretty sure that Playa Bike Repair bought a ton of those bikes last year for renting out at Burning Man. Seemed to work pretty well!
mayormcmatt 7y ago
I didn't know this CEO was the same as from Bluegogo. When that bike share company entered the Bay Area market, they helped push out artists from a West Oakland warehouse studio called Lo-bot and were occupying it for maybe six months before disappearing. The place is still empty.
ykykykyk 7y ago
That was one expensive mistake
baybal2 7y ago
This feels very typical of a Chinese "startup." Any company marketing its leadership on being some "whiz kids" is a red flag. A gigantic amount of Chinese entrepreneurship is just about people trying to game the insane capital market in China under every pretext possible, without any genuine concern for the business being sound. Not much different from what you see in the US, except for even less curbs on outright fraud. After all, all of that came to China along with the first wave of "returnees" from US West Coast. In this case, you have to admit, the company simply ran out of money, and you can not put that in any other way. Whether they would've or wouldn't have been descended upon by the communists wouldn't have changed anything about that. I noticed a tendency that in China, whatever company can be called a substantial, solid business is much more likely to be privately owned, low profile, and kept as far away from capital markets as possible. Best example — Bu Bu Gao group, the second in line after Samsung in smartphones, but is almost invisible. Espressif recently went with a placement, but also very low profile, without much noise, and on a 3rd tier burse oriented to institutional buyers. Allwinner, Rockchips — both companies are past their prime, but still super duper secretive with regards to ways of company's leadership.
- usrusr 7y ago
  > In this case, you have to admit, the company simply ran out of money You seem to have skipped the paragraph with the little tanks. Arbitrary plot twist it out of a clear blue sky, would be too absurd even for an episode of South Park.
  - baybal2 7y ago
    No I didn't. That has nothing to do with them simply not having a way to get profitable, and running out of initial capital. That would've happened invariably of then being raided or not.
hcheung 7y ago
Fascinating story. I wonder what happened to that game company with the little tank, it probably shutdown by the police as well... 4th June is a very sensitive word in China...
walrus01 7y ago
> At the time, early 2016, aero was the next greatest advance in the cycling tech space; like the Giant Propels and Specialized Venges it was pitched against, the Leopard featured a snugly tucked rear wheel, a wind-cheating profile and hidden cabling. As a road cyclist - I'm no expert on this, but even in 2004 such a thing was becoming commonplace in Chinese CF frames and companies that were trying hard to copy Cervelo.
- tomglynch 7y ago
  I think you're mistaken. In 2004 Cervelo had just began offering their Aero bikes, but they were aluminium, not carbon. See the Cervelo Soloist Team. The manufacturers using carbon like Time, Look were not producing anything 'aero'. Giant's TCR (ridden by T mobile) in 2004 was carbon front triangle with aluminium seat and chain stays. And again, not 'aero'. Lots of interesting details from here: http://autobus.cyclingnews.com/teamtech04.php?id=tech/2004/probikes/stevenson_bianchi%20 http://autobus.cyclingnews.com/teamtech04.php?id=tech/2004/p...
- notatoad 7y ago
  completely internal cable routing was definitely not a thing in 2004 - shifter cables were still exiting the brifters horizontally.
rmason 7y ago
Meanwhile incredibly Detroit Bikes appears to be doing quite well. So well in fact that they're attracting multiple competitors in Detroit. Perhaps because they're not competing on price and some people still value American made? https://detroitbikes.com/ https://detroitbikes.com/
- terinjokes 7y ago
  I got my C-Type from Kickstarter, and while it's more expensive than a big box stores, I felt it was still pretty competitive for the quality. It's only had preventative maintenance in the years I've ridden it. I grew up biking, and I've never had one more reliable. I just wish the frame had rack mounts for a pannier rack.

132 points by martin_ 7y ago

Is it just me, or are there seemingly far more people trying to invest and profit off bikeshares than there are using them? I've lived in several cities in europe and i'm not actually sure i've ever seen anybody using them. Yet there seems to be tons of competing companies putting out bikes in the street. On top of that, they don't even seem to bother marketing or anything. The first I'll hear of a new company is seeing a new colour of bike. The idea is sound in practise, but people seem to place great value owning their own transportation and the flexibility it affords them.

jxcl 7y ago
Edit: I'm an idiot. Ignore the below. This article is about a company that was building bicycles to sell directly to consumers, not a bikeshare company.
- martin_ 7y ago
  Most of the article is about why the consumer business failed because the sister company tried to do bikesharing
- baxtr 7y ago
  You are not an idiot :)
ChuckMcM 7y ago
It isn't just you. In a capital rich environment (where getting money for new ventures is easier than normal) a single success (even if it is just perception) and a low barrier to entry, can lead to many copycat companies appearing. And yes, they over saturate the market, and no you can't easily tell which will win and which will lose from the outside. For the "serial entrepreneurs" this is an easy way to stay employed (it can be surprisingly hard to get a job at BigCorp with CEO on your resume). These folks might just start a new company, raise some money, and voila they are once again on an "incredible journey." In my experience for each "successful" exit (where the investors made some money) you get a ticket for one free "future" company from those investors. Once you don't have enough tickets to get another company funded you either have to change venues (new people, less history), or change markets (also new people but can be in the same locale).
- DanFeldman 7y ago
  > it can be surprisingly hard to get a job at BigCorp with CEO on your resume Why do you think that is? It's so common to hear advice that bigco's will always want to hire people w/ Startup experience, but does that not extend to the founders?
  - ChuckMcM 7y ago
    I can only speak for places where I've worked and hired folks, but the consensus seemed to be that people who seek out the CEO role are highly correlated with a need to control everything and less well correlated with "team players" (or people who can work with peers in a give and take sort of situation). In acquisition scenarios such companies are sometimes much more keen on keeping the VP of Engineering ("get things done") person than the CEO ("I'm the boss") person. That and the cited "common knowledge[1]" that the population of CEOs contains a higher percentage of sociopaths than the general population. I have yet to work at a company that considered sociopathic characteristics as a "positive" for the company. [1] I really have heard this from multiple sources but have yet to find any well executed study that shows it to be actually true so I treat such pronouncements with a bit of skepticism. I have heard more than a few people who are disgruntled at losing their job will blame it on their boss being a sociopath. Such externalization of causes feels good psychologically but it is also self serving.
    - arkades 7y ago
      There is such a series of studies - but they were all done by the same PI, who has built his career on redefining "sociopathy" over-broadly, more or less to enable him to have headlines like "20% of CEOs are sociopaths!" edit: I don't know why this is being downvoted. Is it because I'm lampooning a "common knowledge" that people like? For pete's sake, the research paper that spawned this meme even got retracted by the authors: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/23744006.2016.1232537?journalCode=rcrm20 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/23744006.2016.12...
    - bsder 7y ago
      > In acquisition scenarios such companies are sometimes much more keen on keeping the VP of Engineering ("get things done") person than the CEO ("I'm the boss") person. I think it's less "The Boss" than the fact that the CEO is generally more marketing/finance focused (far less relevant after a buyout as the purchasing company already has that established) than the CTO or VP of Engineering. There are, of course, exceptions where a company gets bought specifically to install their CEO in the CEO role of the purchasing company.
camjohnson26 7y ago
The main problem with bike shares is the ridiculously short time limit. If you could check one out for a few hours they’d be more useful, instead most are time limited to about 30 minutes. My sister used one once to bike by a lake front and she said she was stressed the whole time about not making it to the next station to reset the time limit before it expired.
- nradov 7y ago
  They only charge an extra dollar or two to keep the bike longer. For most people it's not worth getting stressed about. I've used bikes shares in a several cities for 3+ hours and it was never a problem (although riding one of those crappy bikes for a few hours is kind of torture).
  - Scoundreller 7y ago
    What, you don’t like pedalling a tank on 2 non-pneumatic wheels when you have to get somewhere?
- Someone 7y ago
  The main Dutch bike share system doesn’t have silly time limits. It has a fixed price of €3,85 (about $4,35) for a day. That allows you, for example, to cycle from a train station to a business meeting, park the bike there for a few hours, and cycle back to the station in the afternoon. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OV-fiets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OV-fiets. It also features halfway decent (for the task at hand) bicycles. Both are good for consumers, but I don’t think such a system makes venture capitalists happy.
- 121789 7y ago
  was that in Chicago? I felt the same stress
Scoundreller 7y ago
In Paris, the private bikeshares seem to have been entirely replaced with scooters and a smaller number of e-bikes. The publicly sanctioned bikeshare is in shambles after an operator change. The only thing keeping the public system alive is it’s offerings outside the city’s core.
- orbifold 7y ago
  The Parisian one is the only one I’ve used and it was much better 5 years ago compared to 2 years ago.
Knufen 7y ago
I live in Denmark and I see 10-15 people ok bikeshare bikes each time I commute. They either use the government ones or rent from private companies.
zn44 7y ago
In London it's hard to find a free bike around the rush hour. They are all gone in case of tube strike or other public transport distraction
simlevesque 7y ago
I live in Montreal, where it all started, and they are everywhere.
cafard 7y ago
I don't know. I see a lot of people on "Citi Bikes", but Washington is a big tourist destination.
luqa 7y ago
In my city (Milan, Italy) bike-sharing is an extremely common solution. I feel like the business model is the main problem. Low margins high-costs (you frequently need to replace thousands of bikes) and basically no moat. Every few years a new startup can enter the marketing with a better bike. The incumbents have to improve their or risk losing the entire market in a matter of weeks.
- Barrin92 7y ago
  >Low margins high-costs (you frequently need to replace thousands of bikes) and basically no moat. the story of the sharing economy right there. I seriously don't know how bike / taxi / scooter rental companies have become a favourite of tech investors. It seems like some Robin Hood scheme to distribute money from investors to customers
- bonestamp2 7y ago
  Can you help us understand why bike-sharing is popular in Milan? For example, why wouldn't someone just buy a bike?
  - icebraining 7y ago
    Seems like a subscription to their BikeMi system costs 36€/year for unlimited free rides (up to 30mins/ride), so quite cost competitive with bike ownership. This is becoming common in main European cities (I know of Brussels, Paris and Lisbon).
  - crummy 7y ago
    It's genuinely less hassle. Where do I park my bike? How do I prevent it from being stolen? It got a flat tire, what do I do? These seem like simple questions but bike sharing provides such a simple solution to them, plus more: you caught a ride to the park but don't want to pay for a taxi back? Missed the bus? Need to get to a meeting a few blocks away but don't want to arrive sweaty from a run? The answer is there's a share bike already within sight of you that you can rent for (literally) pennies in seconds. (They're also pretty heavy for anything but short distances and not always in great condition. And at least in Berlin where I lived you can get your own bike for $50 or so, which I had. But I still like the idea.)
rdiddly 7y ago
I've pondered that question too. Something like Uber or Lyft works partly because of the cost and burden of car ownership. It's attractive to use someone else's equipment if you don't have to buy, maintain, finance, fuel, insure, and store (park) similar equipment yourself, to the tune of thousands of dollars per year. But then you look at bike ownership. I almost want to put "bike ownership" in quotes because even the mere phrase makes it sound so much more serious and demanding than it is. It's so easy and cheap, it seems obvious you would just do that. Or put it this way, I don't find myself going "I just don't want & can't handle all that responsibility of a bike!" It's like, boy you better not get any houseplants then, that much responsibility will stress you right out!
- analog31 7y ago
  Interestingly, a thing about Uber/Lyft is that the number of cars is limited because they are based on converting existing private cars to hired use. So Uber/Lyft don't eliminate private cars. The number of bike shares that can be pumped into a city is limited only by the capital that can be pumped in.
  - alvah 7y ago
    Are you sure nobody specifically buys or leases a car to do Uber / Lyft gigs?
    - analog31 7y ago
      I'd be shocked if the economics made sense, but not all investments produce a return.
      - TeMPOraL 7y ago
        Uber had (probably still has) it structured so that if the investment fails, it's the driver that suffers, not the company.
  - ac29 7y ago
    Judging by a billboard that I pass reasonably frequently, Uber is more than happy to "help" potential drivers without cars get them and start driving for Uber [0]. In theory, the number of cars available to Uber is also only limited by the capital that can be pumped in. I don't know if the prices are currently subsidized, but there's no reason they couldn't be. [0] I'm assuming it's this program: https://www.uber.com/us/en/drive/vehicle-solutions/ https://www.uber.com/us/en/drive/vehicle-solutions/
fooblitzky 7y ago
Seattle collects data on bike share usage, available here: https://www.seattle.gov/transportation/projects-and-programs/programs/bike-program/bike-share https://www.seattle.gov/transportation/projects-and-programs... Seems in the sunnier months they get about 200,000 trips, from a fleet of 10,000 bikes. I think a lot of people start riding the share bikes before deciding to purchase a bike themselves too. Overall ridership is up 12% this year.
- breuleux 7y ago
  In Montreal, the figure ranges from 600,000 (May) to 900,000 trips (July) from a fleet of 7,500 (there are no bikes from mid-November to mid-April). They're everywhere. Edit: I was still on the 2017 figures for some reason. 800,000 trips last May, 975,000 last August. (https://montreal.bixi.com/en/open-data https://montreal.bixi.com/en/open-data)
  - Belphemur 7y ago
    Even with those ridership number the company went bankrupt in 2014 and had to be bought by the city that made it non profit. In other words, not really a profitable market.
    - alexanderdmitri 7y ago
      Companies targeting great markets fail all the time due to other factors. It not like all that needs to happen is someone point their finger at a good market and magically money starts piling up.
- mdorazio 7y ago
  Great link, thanks for sharing. A couple more stats for other readers here: - In May 2019, bike share users took about 218,400 trips on a fleet of about 4,400-5,100 bikes. (~43 trips per bike average during the month) - Around 95,000 individual users - ~2 trips per individual user during the month So, realistically not that great on a per-user basis and it seems like a lot of users are only trying it out a few times or grabbing a bike once in a while. That meshes pretty well with the idea that people who find themselves using the service frequently probably just buy a bike.
twic 7y ago
> i'm not actually sure i've ever seen anybody using them As a datapoint, i almost crashed into someone riding one in London an hour and a half ago. The front lights on the Lime bikes are evidently not very reliable.
- kohtatsu 7y ago
  Oh no. My girlfriend and I recently rented some Lime bikes in Calgary. The brakes on hers weren't reliable enough to go down hills, let alone stop in an emergency. Mine weren't much better. We left appropriate reviews, and were able to tell the next rider which to use, but they really need a quick maintenance survey, even just for brake shape, and perhaps a "flag bike as dangerous" button. Also found the e-assist awkward, particularly at low speeds around pedestrians. Would ride again, but just double check the brakes/mainteance.
Johnny555 7y ago
I make regular use of bike share -- I have 2 bus options to take me home, one drops me off 2 blocks from home, one drops me off 2 miles from home. When I take the farther bus, I usually use a bike-share bike for those last 2 miles (the route is on a dedicated bike path). Works great for me and apparently someone uses the bike in for their commute in the mornings since the bike is usually gone in the morning when I get to the bus stop.
sethhochberg 7y ago
There's a definite network effect... its hard to justify riding a shared bike somewhere if you can't be reasonably sure there will be one for you to ride back when its time to return. Maybe you could cobble a trip together with multiple vendors in cities where there are competing systems, but thats more hassle and makes it difficult if you're buying a yearly pass or some other monthly discount. If you want some real data from a large program with good public support, CitiBike in NYC publishes open ridership data: https://www.citibikenyc.com/system-data https://www.citibikenyc.com/system-data The tl;dr is that the system is very popular, and they're constantly expanding it - currently averaging around 62k trips per day on 12k bikes across 750 stations. I own my own bike, but I'll use a Citibike for a one-way trip or to bridge a gap when I'm already out away from home without my bike. There is also a ton of utility for people who ride more casually, or don't want to carry bikes up stairs, or don't have room in their apartment, etc, etc.
megaremote 7y ago
> I've lived in several cities in europe and i'm not actually sure i've ever seen anybody using them. Used them all the time in London and Paris, and visiting other cities. They were great. Loads of people used them in the cities I saw. I think there are a sort of people who will only use cars for everything, and don't really notice anything not car related.
benj111 7y ago
"they don't even seem to bother marketing or anything. The first I'll hear of a new company is seeing a new colour of bike" Is that not the best marketing? Actually paying for inner city marketing is probably expensive, online marketing is probably going to reach more people that this isnt relevant to. If you're seeing the bike you probably are the target market and can see its a somewhat legit company (in the sense that they do actually have bikes at least).
mruts 7y ago
I've seen tons of people riding the CitiBikes in NYC. They seem fairly popular.
kgutteridge 7y ago
I used the Boris Bikes in London 249 times last year, theres an annual pass that costs £90. I commute into the city by train so its a lot easier than using my own bike. In London at least the scheme seems fairly well used with around million hires a month in the summer months http://content.tfl.gov.uk/santander-cycles-quarterly-performance-q3-1819.pdf http://content.tfl.gov.uk/santander-cycles-quarterly-perform...
wastedhours 7y ago
I see the Santander Cycles used in London all of the time (not calling them by their slang name because #politics) - it flies in the face of the notion that you have to be dockless to succeed in bike sharing. Honestly, I hate the litter these dockless sharing companies have spread across the city.
stevekemp 7y ago
Like many of the other people to reply, I can only say that here in Helsinki the local council operates a scheme which is very very popular. It costs €30 for a "season", and that gives you 30-minutes free ride from the bicycles you'll find all over the place in their stands. You can pay a small fee to get more time, or you can do what most people do which is to ride to a stand, and swap your bike for another. The only problem with the scheme is that it only runs around the summer, but I guess fewer people are interested in cycling in the snow/ice-heavy part of the year. More details here: https://kaupunkipyorat.hsl.fi/en/helsinki/products https://kaupunkipyorat.hsl.fi/en/helsinki/products

Whinner 7y ago

Another reason to not support large ticket items on Kickstarter.

dajonker 7y ago

I always find it shocking to hear that so many people think crowdfunded projects have no risk, that it's somehow similar to ordering stuff from Amazon. Especially when people invest more money than they are actually willing to lose. Whose mistake is that? The customer for not understanding what they are into? Platforms like Kickstarter for not explaining it clearly enough?

nradov 7y ago

It's a shame that there's been little innovation from road bike manufacturers in the past 10 years or so. The last major innovation was aero carbon frames. Since then everyone is just copying each other and trying to improve by fractions of a percent for weight, stiffness, and efficiency. Most of the value and innovation has shifted to the groupset suppliers, with Shimano taking the lion's share of the market and a few smaller players picking up scraps. When all the important components come from Shimano it barely matters who manufactures the frame and assembles the complete bike. At this point road bikes are about as good as they will ever be within the limits of available materials and UCI rules. It would be nice if one of the big bike manufacturers would make their own high-quality components to compete with Shimano. Or throw out the UCI rules and build a fast, comfortable bike for customers who don't care about competing in sanctioned races.

rasz 7y ago
Why bother innovating when its not needed? Expensive bicycles are in the same market as fancy watches. Its all just wealth signalling. Nobody needs 10% lighter frames, or 5% more aerodynamic shapes. If you want to drive faster or burn less energy you go electric, If you want health benefits you buy the shittiest heaviest bike you can find and pedal harder.
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  Don't get a shitty bike if you want exercise. Shitty bikes are unpleasant to ride, making the experience not fun, and discouraging you from doing more (and longer duration) riding. Also, safety is important, and shitty bikes are less safe.
  - bluntfang 7y ago
    This response to the person ahead of you makes me think you either don't know much about bikes or you missed their point. I think we all agree, buy something shitty and you get shit, especially with things you put between you and the earth. A medium quality bike, which costs an order of magnitude less than a "fancy" bike, will do literally everyone who isn't a cat 1-2 racer fine, objectively. Price difference is $1-5k for a mid range vs $10-20k for top of the line. I don't think anyone is advocating for $300 walmart bikes here.

aurora72 7y ago

There are no noteworthy novelties in this kickstarted bike. I'd personally venture to lose some money if I saw some real innovation and I wouldn't bother even if they failed to deliver the end product or the company went bankrupt. Here we see only some Chinese copy work.

Theodores 7y ago

A very well written article. I like the point about how the follies of the bike sharing business have actually got people to ride bikes. Before it was not an option to hire a bike for a day, nowadays that is a thing. It takes a while for things to find their level. The 'Boris bike' is now a feature of London, the other bikes haven't established that niche in the streetscape. The road bike was also innovative, if flawed. Plenty of bikes and plenty of bike groupsets are flawed when they first come out. It takes a couple of iterations to get right and the costs of getting it wrong are terrible. Years ago in the days of the mountain bike craze a brand came out with a few of their own components including a bespoke freehub body. This did not last long on any given bike and it did not take long before the warranty returns aspect of the business fixing whole wheels took over. There was no scope to develop the brand when all hands are literally swapping tyres and tubes onto new wheels and getting them out to customers. Sometimes bikes that don't actually work don't bounce back. During the mountain bike boom there was a shortage of Shimano components and a rising Yen. This made it hard to get the gears and brakes needed to build a bike. So European components might be substituted. And they would not actually work together, no matter how skilled the mechanic, no matter how new everything was, the gears would not shift and the brakes would not stop the bike. Very few of these frankenbikes made it back. They just sat in sheds and garages, never to be ridden! The SpeedX bike was not a bike that would be just dumped in the shed or bought as a well meaning gift. They could not rely on 90% of the problems not coming back. They also were never going to do well with the cycling press. Or the industry. The cycling business is actually really conservative and there are chunks of it controlled by people who never actually ride..

at-fates-hands 7y ago

I can't think of an industry that hasn't been affected by Chinese manufacturers trying to undercut American or European companies by short cutting the manufacturing process. I just see the same thing with this bike company. Ignore all the rideshare stuff, the push to grow so fast and not having a sustainable product and its the same story. They took a standard Aero fram and tried to make it appear as a "high end" product. The problem is, once you've ridden a high end road bike you suddenly realize the amount of engineering and R&D that goes into those bikes to get them to perform at that level. You can't just reproduce that overnight, it takes time and a lot of money. From the article (and the scathing reviews of the bike) it didn't sound like they really tried to make a quality product, just another carbon Aero knockoff with a cool integrated stem. At that point, it was easy to undercut your competition on price. The lessons are all too clear and which you see a lot of. You can't cut corners on products like this and sell it off as "high end" and expect to get away with it. Source: I worked in the bike industry for almost 15 years. Had various stints with Specialized and Cannondale.

adambyrtek 7y ago

I wonder how does Kickstarter deal with credit card chargebacks? Their support site basically says "talk to us directly please"[1], but it's common for chargebacks to be awarded to customers regardless of arguments provided by a merchant. Would they just consider it the cost of doing business or try to recover the money from the backed project? [1] https://www.kickstarter.com/disputes https://www.kickstarter.com/disputes

mbesto 7y ago

Oh man, I remember when SpeedX first came out. I can't describe it exactly, but it was an immediate red flag for me. Basically they tried to fix everything about buying a bike in one fell swoop and said it was going to cost less than other providers. If they were able to provide a superior experience to bike sizing, bike computer, wheels, frame, etc all in one fell swoop, then I would expect the overall product to be more expensive...not cheaper. Huge red flag.

usrusr 7y ago
> I can't describe it exactly, but it was an immediate red flag for me. The universal playbook of all bike related crowdfunding campaigns: take a tiny innovation (or none at all, it's not strictly necessary to have something original), put it in a blender with everything that has become state of the art within the last decade or two and use it to impress those who have never experienced anything better than a walmart clunker from the falling edge of the original mountain-bike wave.

ozten 7y ago

The article challenges Kickstarter to refund their 5% commission when companies go bankrupt. Seems like the right thing to do and could win back more customer loyalty.

usrusr 7y ago
It would be seen a nice symbolic act by some, but as an admission of guilt by many others. This would not end well.

rb808 7y ago

I wonder if the boss is still driving the lambo. (actually I shouldn't have to guess)

Balgair 7y ago

> Bluegogo’s contribution alone was 800,000 bikes, impounded in cities across China – wave after wave of blue bikes, piled two high, sitting in construction sites and empty lots on the outskirts of megacities, waiting. Decaying. > Zoom out from the specific, and you quickly start to drown in the enormity of it all. Millions of bikes, assembled by thousands of hands. Entire towns like Wangqingtuo, built around servicing a rapacious demand. Restaurants and hotels and supermarkets, constructed and opened and shuttered in what are now virtual ghost-towns. Countless families relying on the bikeshare industry to survive. Seats and spokes and tyres beyond number, consigned as fast as they were made to technicolour scrapheaps around China. All of it, this vast mound of human toil, left to rust and rot among bamboo and rubble. I am continually facinated with China and it's people. But in instances like this I get a real feeling of looking into the eyes of Yog-Sothoth, the Gate and the Key.

_dmurph 7y ago

I'm pretty sure that Playa Bike Repair bought a ton of those bikes last year for renting out at Burning Man. Seemed to work pretty well!

mayormcmatt 7y ago

I didn't know this CEO was the same as from Bluegogo. When that bike share company entered the Bay Area market, they helped push out artists from a West Oakland warehouse studio called Lo-bot and were occupying it for maybe six months before disappearing. The place is still empty.

ykykykyk 7y ago

That was one expensive mistake

baybal2 7y ago

This feels very typical of a Chinese "startup." Any company marketing its leadership on being some "whiz kids" is a red flag. A gigantic amount of Chinese entrepreneurship is just about people trying to game the insane capital market in China under every pretext possible, without any genuine concern for the business being sound. Not much different from what you see in the US, except for even less curbs on outright fraud. After all, all of that came to China along with the first wave of "returnees" from US West Coast. In this case, you have to admit, the company simply ran out of money, and you can not put that in any other way. Whether they would've or wouldn't have been descended upon by the communists wouldn't have changed anything about that. I noticed a tendency that in China, whatever company can be called a substantial, solid business is much more likely to be privately owned, low profile, and kept as far away from capital markets as possible. Best example — Bu Bu Gao group, the second in line after Samsung in smartphones, but is almost invisible. Espressif recently went with a placement, but also very low profile, without much noise, and on a 3rd tier burse oriented to institutional buyers. Allwinner, Rockchips — both companies are past their prime, but still super duper secretive with regards to ways of company's leadership.

usrusr 7y ago
> In this case, you have to admit, the company simply ran out of money You seem to have skipped the paragraph with the little tanks. Arbitrary plot twist it out of a clear blue sky, would be too absurd even for an episode of South Park.
- baybal2 7y ago
  No I didn't. That has nothing to do with them simply not having a way to get profitable, and running out of initial capital. That would've happened invariably of then being raided or not.

hcheung 7y ago

Fascinating story. I wonder what happened to that game company with the little tank, it probably shutdown by the police as well... 4th June is a very sensitive word in China...

walrus01 7y ago

> At the time, early 2016, aero was the next greatest advance in the cycling tech space; like the Giant Propels and Specialized Venges it was pitched against, the Leopard featured a snugly tucked rear wheel, a wind-cheating profile and hidden cabling. As a road cyclist - I'm no expert on this, but even in 2004 such a thing was becoming commonplace in Chinese CF frames and companies that were trying hard to copy Cervelo.

tomglynch 7y ago
I think you're mistaken. In 2004 Cervelo had just began offering their Aero bikes, but they were aluminium, not carbon. See the Cervelo Soloist Team. The manufacturers using carbon like Time, Look were not producing anything 'aero'. Giant's TCR (ridden by T mobile) in 2004 was carbon front triangle with aluminium seat and chain stays. And again, not 'aero'. Lots of interesting details from here: http://autobus.cyclingnews.com/teamtech04.php?id=tech/2004/probikes/stevenson_bianchi%20 http://autobus.cyclingnews.com/teamtech04.php?id=tech/2004/p...
notatoad 7y ago
completely internal cable routing was definitely not a thing in 2004 - shifter cables were still exiting the brifters horizontally.

rmason 7y ago

Meanwhile incredibly Detroit Bikes appears to be doing quite well. So well in fact that they're attracting multiple competitors in Detroit. Perhaps because they're not competing on price and some people still value American made? https://detroitbikes.com/ https://detroitbikes.com/

terinjokes 7y ago
I got my C-Type from Kickstarter, and while it's more expensive than a big box stores, I felt it was still pretty competitive for the quality. It's only had preventative maintenance in the years I've ridden it. I grew up biking, and I've never had one more reliable. I just wish the frame had rack mounts for a pannier rack.